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Table of Contents **********
From Part 14:
Lois's body was begging for more, pleading with her. She didn't care if she didn't remember any of this tomorrow. Right now all that mattered was him - his lips, his hands, and this moment.
Then she felt an odd sensation against her hip. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation but, at first, she couldn't quite pinpoint what it was.
"Clark? Are you vibrating?"
"What?" he asked and then sighed when he realized his pager was going off. "It's my beeper."
He pulled it out of his pants pocket, intending to toss it across the room and retrieve it later. But he looked at the display first, out of habit.
It was the number for the police precinct. It was Henderson.
************
PART FIFTEEN
************
It was a wake up call. Just enough of a reality-check to bring him back to sanity. “I’m sorry.” He kissed her again softly before sitting up and making his way off the couch.
“Sorry?” Lois leaned up on her elbows and frowned at Clark.
Clark gestured apologetically at his pager. “It’s Inspector Henderson. He said he’d page me when the copy of the security tape was ready for me to pick up. With Dr. Klein in prison for the break-in and the real criminal still out there, I should probably get down there and get that tape so we can take a look at it.” He held a hand out to help her up.
Lois sighed quietly, wishing for one fleeting moment that their jobs weren’t always so demanding and hectic – but just for a moment. “Yeah. I understand. You should go.” She took his hand to pull herself up from the couch. Once she was standing she didn’t let go of his hand, allowing the momentum carrying her forward until she was in his arms. She nuzzled his neck, kissing it tenderly.
“Lois,” Clark whispered her name with difficulty and then murmured her name again into her hair as he kissed the top of her head. She leaned up and kissed his lips one last time before stepping away from him. He took a deep breath to clear his mind. “I, uh... I guess you’d better grab your spare key and I’ll take you back to your Jeep.”
Lois got a sheepish look on her face. “Yes. The key. Right... I probably should have told you this sooner.”
Clark gave her a puzzled look. “Told me what?”
“The key isn’t here. It’s at the Planet.” The color creeping into her cheeks darkened visibly. “A couple of months back I almost locked my keys in my Jeep at work, so I took my key and put it in my desk, in case I ever really did lock them in there. But, I, uh, kinda got distracted after we got here. I figured I’d just tell you later.”
Clark grinned at her. She had wanted this as much as he had. Well, they could continue their *discussion* later tonight, after he’d had time to have a real discussion with her first. “Okay, then, how about I run you by the Planet before I go to the precinct and we can go pick up the Jeep later?”
She nodded at him as she began tucking her shirt back inside her skirt. Clark walked over to her chair to retrieve his suit coat and *suit*. He spun back into his complete ensemble and started to pocket his pager in his side suit coat pocket. His fingers came in contact with the Nirvana sample and notes already inside.
Clark pulled the bottle and papers from his pocket and looked at them. It probably wasn’t a good idea to carry this stuff around with him all day, especially since he was getting ready to go back to the police precinct. He should probably leave it here for the time being.
“I should probably hide this stuff, for safe-keeping,” he said, glancing around her apartment for a safe place to stash it. “I don’t think I should have it on me when I go to see Henderson – just in case.”
Lois held out her hand. “Here, let me put it in my scrap-box. I really doubt anyone’s going to look for it there.”
When Clark reached across the coffee table between them to hand the items to her, a folded, wrinkled paper on the table below caught his eye.
He glanced back up at Lois before lowering his glasses to look at the paper - one quick x-ray confirmed his suspicion. It was her note from the night before. His heart was in his throat as he bent down and picked up the paper. He tried to calm himself, tried to tell himself that she couldn’t have read it. If she had, she would have immediately brought it to his attention - not left it sitting here in her apartment, folded up on the table.
Lois watched curiously as Clark retrieved the *trash* that she had pulled from his suit coat that morning. “I’m sorry, was that important?” She cleared her throat timidly. “I found that when I found the ring box this morning. I thought it was trash. I was going to throw it away for you.”
“You didn’t read it...” he repeated, this time out loud as if to reassure himself.
“I, uh, was a little distracted.” Her mind flashed back to the way the ring had sparkled on her finger in the morning sunlight. “And like I said, I thought it was trash.”
Lois furrowed her eyebrows as she watched him stuff the paper into his coat pocket. “So it was important. What was it?”
Clark’s mouth went dry. “A note from you,” he said quietly, unable to look at her.
“Really? When did I give it to you?”
“Last night.”
Last night? That paper looked like it had been folded and unfolded repeatedly. When he said it was a note from her she had assumed it was some sort of love note she had written to him that he had been sentimental enough to carry around with him. The fact that it had been so well read in just one night, only served to stoke her curiosity even further. “Can I see it?”
“No,” he answered a little too quickly. When her eyebrow began to rise and she got that look of challenge in her eyes, he continued, “Not right now. This requires a little introduction and time, and we don’t have that time right now. Tonight. I promise. I’ll share it with you tonight.” He would share everything with her tonight - and then beg her for forgiveness.
Lois wasn’t happy about it. But she knew he really did need to get down to the precinct. “All right. But don’t you dare think I’ll forget.”
**********
Lois sat at her desk, completely lost in thought. She hadn’t found it this difficult to concentrate since... Well, when had the last time been? It might have been when she was seeing Dr. Friskin and trying to decide which of the three men in her life she was really in love with – Clark, Dan, or Superman. Not that there had really been a decision to make. She had come to realize that she had known all along.
Falling in love with Clark had been a gradual thing. And yet it had snuck up on her and then dominated her before she had any chance to resist it. And now she was helpless to fight against it - not that she wanted to.
But it was those feelings for Clark that was making it so difficult to concentrate right now.
She was sure that, truth be told, she had probably been this distracted after she found out Clark was Superman, and he had proposed to her. She had some of those memories. The parts that had come back to her in her dreams she could remember, but a good portion of it was still sketchy.
But this – this was just terrible. She looked down at her computer screen. She had been stuck on this sentence for the last fifteen minutes. She couldn’t seem to get her mind to focus. It was still back at her apartment, on the couch with Clark – or daydreaming about where they could go when Clark got back so they could continue what they had started.
She had to get tough with herself or she wasn’t going to get anything done today. She sat up straighter in her chair and pulled it closer to her desk. She took a big gulp of her caffeinated coffee – which to her dismay was beginning to cool down considerably – and took a deep, cleansing breath.
Lois put her hands on the keyboard and her eyes to the screen – and then abruptly every nerve ending in her body went on alert...
...as Clark’s hands came down to rest on top of her shoulders.
“Hi,” he said quietly as he bent down close to her ear. “I missed you.” The whispered words sent a shiver through her and made her smile.
“Mmm, me too. Did you get the tape?” she asked, tilting her head to look at him.
“Yeah. Henderson was out on a call, but he had left it for me at the front desk. So I guess I’ll have to call back later to tell him about what Church said.” He squeezed her shoulders softly and it sent a tingle through her. “You wanna come in the conference room with me and take a look?”
Lois almost asked ‘take a look at what’ in a sultry tone but realized at the last second that he meant the tape. Focus. Yes, the tape. She wanted to look at the tape. She nodded at him and stood up. Clark reached out and put one hand behind her back, escorting her towards the conference room.
The touch of his hand made her knees feel weak when she thought about how that hand had touched her earlier. How it had stroked across the bare skin of her back, her stomach. God, why couldn’t she concentrate?
She knew why... It was because she *knew*. She knew now for a certainty that Clark loved her, that he was going to marry her. He had all but proposed to her again – saying that he just wanted to give her time to remember everything. He had said he would marry her no matter what – even if her memory never fully recovered.
The thought made her dizzy and she had to focus on the conference room door so she didn’t trip herself. What Clark had said was of course ridiculous – there was no way she’d let him make a commitment to uncertainty like that. But it still made her feel an incredible sense of belonging, of love.
Clark followed closely behind Lois, watching her intently. He wasn’t sure how he could sense it – maybe it was the rise in her heart rate that he could hear, or maybe it was the way she kept taking in short, shallow breaths – but he could tell something was affecting her. He wondered if it was the same thing that was affecting him.
His mind flashed back to her hands on the bare skin of his back, her lips pulling against his, eagerly. He’d barely been able to fly straight afterwards. It had been pleasurable torture, flying with her in his arms to bring her to the Planet.
Clark hadn’t been able to think of much else, since leaving Lois’s apartment. They had done some intense kissing and necking before... before her accident. But he couldn’t remember anything quite that passionate or urgent.
And it had been a while.
Clark reached out and opened the door for her to go inside the conference room. Was it his imagination or did she just purposefully brush against him?
A slight breeze wafted in her wake, carrying her scent on it. It was a mixture of her shampoo, perfume, and something deeper, more elemental - something he had noticed earlier when he had been kissing her on the couch. He took a deeper breath, letting her fragrance saturate his senses. As it ignited a path down his throat and into his lungs, a heat slid through him to settle low in his stomach.
Clark followed her inside, shutting the door behind them. Lois was just about to pull out a chair to take a seat, when she felt a gust of air behind her. She turned around to watch in astonishment as all the shades in the conference room went down and the set of soft presentation lights came on.
And then Clark was there, holding her in his arms.
“I missed you,” he repeated in a whisper, his voice husky.
In response, she threw her arms around him and began kissing him. Her movements were reckless and demanding. Her hands clutched at his body, wanting to touch him everywhere at once.
“Clark,” she panted, “I’m not sure...” He reclaimed possession of her mouth again, ending her thought. When he moved his lips further down her neck, she continued, “...we should be doing this... oh god, Clark... in the conference room.”
That’s what she was saying. By contrast, what she was actually doing was backing him up until he came to the chair that was behind him. At her urging, he sat down. She advanced on him, sliding one knee between his legs to rest it against the seat of the chair as she bent down to reclaim his lips once more.
He slid one hand around her waist, drawing her to him, while he ran his other hand just under the hem of her skirt to rest on the back of her thigh.
Clark broke from their kiss. “Well, where would you...” He kissed her briefly but firmly. “...suggest that we...” Lois nudged her knee a little closer in between his legs, eliciting a groan from him. “...do this?” he finished, his voice shaking a little.
She smiled against his lips. “I don’t know,” she murmured, moving his tie aside so she could run her hands up his chest. “Someplace a little more private and a little less open...”
“The supply closet?” he suggested, punctuating the last word when she leaned in to take a nibble of his ear.
She giggled and Clark could feel the vibrations of her laugh against his neck. “Hmmm, maybe the stairwell,” she teased. “We’re at least semi-experienced there.” All of the sudden, Clark was pushing her back and straightening his tie. “Clark? What’s wrong?”
“Jimmy’s coming,” he told her hastily.
Lois turned around in time to see the door swing open. She looked back at Clark and watched as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands in front of him. She had to repress a snicker.
She covered her amusement by scowling at Jimmy. “Don’t you knock?” she barked.
Jimmy looked abashed, fidgeting a little as he started to close the door. “Sorry, guys.”
“It’s okay, Jimmy,” Clark told him. “What did you need?”
“Well, uh, Lois gave me the list of people with access to Dr. Klein’s lab when she came in this morning. I’ve run every identifier I could on these people. They’re clean. One of the lab techs has a speeding ticket but, other than that, they’re all upstanding citizens. If you’re looking for something here, you’re gonna have to go a lot deeper than what I could.”
He held the list out and Lois snatched it out of his hands. “Thanks.” Jimmy started to leave but Lois’s voice stopped him. “Hey, Jimmy?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you let Perry know that we’ve got the security tape from STAR Labs? I think he wanted to watch it,” she instructed him.
Jimmy smiled, obviously relieved that he didn’t seem to be in the doghouse any longer. “Sure thing.” And then he left Lois and Clark alone, once more.
Clark let out a long shaky sigh.
“Told you we shouldn’t do that here,” Lois told him, smiling widely.
“I guess that kills any fantasies I had about the supply closet or stairwell, then, huh?” Clark chuckled lightly.
Lois joined him in a laugh, smacking him on the arm playfully. “Well, at least not *this* stairwell. Besides I bet we can come up with plenty of interesting places to make out at our apartments – where we’re much less likely to be interrupted.”
Clark thought about their last couple of attempts to “make out” at Lois’s apartment – not likely.
Perry opened the door and walked in, followed closely by Jimmy. Perry held his hands out wide in front of him. “So? Where’s the tape? Put it in. Let’s go people. The suits upstairs are breathing down my neck like Elvis on his manager after an eight-month tour. What have we got?”
Clark got up out of his chair and popped the tape in the VCR. When it started playing he backed up, taking a seat again to watch the recording.
The tape started up with the display clock in the lower left corner showing five-thirty p.m. Clark recognized Dr. Klein’s assistant, Mandy, as she came out of the lab. She had her purse on one arm and her coat slung across her other arm as she left for the day.
After a long few moments of nothing happening, Lois walked over and pressed the fast forward button on the VCR. She pressed resume when a man approached the door. It was Dr. Klein – he was still dressed in his white lab coat, obviously staying late to work. He opened the lab door and went inside. Lois pressed the fast forward button again and almost a half an hour on the timestamp went by before Dr. Klein exited the lab. He was no longer wearing his lab coat and, instead, had a black leather jacket under one arm and a motorcycle helmet in his other.
A motorcycle? Really? Clark would have never guessed.
A moment later the tape faded to garbled fuzz - the end of the recording that the police had provided them with.
“So is that it?” Perry asked, sounding annoyed. “Great shades of Elvis! Surely they aren’t holding Dr., uh...” Perry looked at Clark.
“Dr. Klein,” Clark supplied.
“Yeah, Klein...” Perry nodded, continuing his previous thought, “...based on this. This evidence seems a little flimsy to me. What does it prove?”
“Nothing,” Clark said heatedly. “It proves nothing.”
“It proves that Dr. Klein was the last person to leave the lab,” Lois pointed out.
Clark hated it when Lois played ‘devil’s advocate’ – because it usually meant that she was arguing with him. He didn’t feel like arguing with her, especially when he knew Dr. Klein was innocent.
Wasn’t he? This tape proved nothing. “But what if someone entered the lab through a different door or was already inside?” Clark postulated. “Maybe someone doctored the tape?”
Lois raised an eyebrow at him. “Who’s reaching now? Aren’t you the one who always tells me if something looks...”
“Yes,” he interrupted her, “I am. All I’m saying is that I’m not ready to jump on the bandwagon that Henderson is driving. Not just yet. There are still too many questions out there.” Clark went over to the VCR and ejected the tape. “That lab can’t be accessed without a keycard. I’m gonna take this tape back to the precinct and see if Henderson’s back yet. I want to see if he has the records of whose cards were swiped that day going in and out of the lab.”
Clark headed for the door but was stopped by Lois’s voice, “Clark, wait. Don’t you remember, we’re supposed to meet Scardino at the Penny Loaf at one o’clock for lunch?”
Clark looked down at his watch. It was almost twelve-thirty. That didn’t leave him much time. “Yeah, I know,” he told her. “I’ll meet you there, okay?” And then he was out the door.
Lois looked over at Perry and smiled half-heartedly. Clark had better be there. She didn’t look forward to attending a lunch with Dan by herself.
She just had this uneasy feeling.
**********
“Yes,” Henderson said, nodding his head, “of course I have the records of whose cards accessed the lab that day, not that I needed them. We’ve got our man.”
“How can you be so sure?” Clark argued, trying to keep from gritting his teeth. How could Henderson be so categorically one-sided on this? “When Dr. Klein left that lab, he wasn’t carrying anything but a leather jacket and a bike helmet.”
“The only items taken were some notes and the formula. Klein’s assistant has given a sworn statement that they were still there when she left. Klein was the only one left in that part of the lab. Both of those items were small enough to fit in someone’s pocket. How can you prove that Klein *didn’t* have them when he left?”
Clark realized he was right – that was how Mandy had smuggled a sample out to him, after all.
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Henderson said, opening the door to his office and holding a hand out as if to show Clark out.
Clark sighed. Henderson wasn’t going to listen. Clark rose out of his chair and made his way to the door. If he could only find a way to make him listen... As Clark extended his hand towards Henderson to shake, he remembered something. “Oh, by the way, Bill Church, Jr. says hello.”
Henderson raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been talking to Church?”
“Yeah, Lois and I thought he might have had something to do with the break-in at STAR Labs.”
“And what did he say?” Henderson asked, his interest obviously piqued.
“He singled out Mindy Church,” Clark told him, watching his expression. Henderson’s face went from interested to amused in less time than it took Clark to change from one persona to another.
“Mrs. Church... yeah. Okay.”
“Look, I don’t blame you. I thought the same thing,” Clark admitted. “But the last thing Bill, Jr. told us was to warn you to watch the evidence locker for the Knox trial. He said if Mindy was involved, then she is probably working with Knox. And if she is, you can bet they’ll try to make that evidence disappear.”
It seemed to Clark that Henderson’s face went just a little pale. He shut the door and went back over to his desk, gesturing for Clark to sit back down.
“Kent, I’m gonna tell you something. What I’m about to tell you is to be kept in strict confidence – off the record.”
Clark nodded.
“I’m serious. If this gets out, you, Lois, or anyone else at the Daily Planet can be assured that you’ll get no further cooperation or information from anyone under my authority. Do you understand?”
Clark nodded again. “I understand. You can trust me.”
Henderson narrowed his eyes at him and sighed softly. “The evidence for the trial? It’s already missing.”
“What? When?”
Henderson nodded. “Your friend Klein took it.”
“What?” Clark asked again, his voice a little harsher this time. “You can’t have any...”
“Proof? No,” he paused and gave Clark a small smirk. “But that tape and those key card records give me enough to hold Klein and get a warrant to search his house.”
Clark was dumbfounded. Was he the only one who found this to be ridiculous? “You can’t be serious, Henderson. Do you really think Dr. Klein would have the capability to break into an evidence locker and steal that sample?”
“Absolutely. If you can believe that Mindy Church could hold two thoughts together, surely you can see that a man of Klein’s intelligence could steal.” At Clark’s disgusted expression he pressed on. “Look, all I know are the facts. And the fact is, I checked the evidence locker the morning after you and Klein came here. Since someone had stolen the sample from STAR Labs, I wanted to check on our sample. It was gone. It seemed highly coincidental to me that it would go missing after Klein had been here. Then we found the evidence on that STAR Labs security camera from the hallway outside Klein’s laboratory. And according to the passkey records, Klein was the only person in the building.” Henderson shrugged. “It’s enough to make him a suspect. And if I find what I’m looking for at his house...”
“You won’t,” Clark assured him with a shake of his head. “Let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that Dr. Klein is working with Intergang. They wouldn’t leave something like that at his house for you to find. If Intergang took those samples, you can bet they are long gone.”
“That may be true, Kent. But I have to explore all the angles on this one.” Henderson picked a pen up from his desk and forcefully plunged it into a cup that said ‘Safety First’, containing various other pens and pencils. “My butt’s on the line with that evidence going missing right before the trial. I have less than seventy-two hours to find it and get it back.”
“If you’re going to check all the angles, then you should at least get footage from the other security cameras...” Clark persisted. “Have you checked to see if it’s possible for those key cards to be duplicated? Someone could have gotten a hold of Dr. Klein’s card and...”
“No. Look, Kent, I won’t pretend to understand why you are so adamantly defending Klein but, simply put, I don’t have the manpower to waste on something like that – not when the evidence so clearly points to Klein.” Henderson walked back over to his door again, opening it.
Clark opened his mouth to offer another suggestion but Henderson silenced him with a wave of his hand. “If Klein’s house comes up clean, then we’ll go from there,” Henderson assured him. “But right now, he’s our best lead.” Henderson gestured at the open doorway. “Now if you’ll excuse me...”
Realizing he had gotten as far as he was going to get, Clark nodded at him and walked out the door. He made his way to the entrance of the precinct and stopped at the front desk. He looked down at the name plate – Sherry Walker.
“Sherry, may I use your phone?”
The young brunette looked up at him and she smiled pleasantly. “Local call?” Clark nodded and she handed him the phone. “Just dial nine to get out.”
He dialed the number to STAR Labs.
“STAR Labs, how may I direct your call?” the receptionist asked.
“Mandy...” Clark paused - he didn’t know her last name, “...Dr. Klein’s assistant, please.” He looked down at his watch, hoping he could catch her before she left for lunch.
“May I ask whose calling?”
“Clark Kent with the Daily Planet.”
A few seconds passed and then she was back. “Mr. Kent? Mandy is getting ready to leave and asked me to take a message,” the woman’s voice told him.
“That’s okay. I’ll just call her back after lunch.”
“No, Mr. Kent, she’s not leaving for lunch - she’s leaving for the day.”
That wasn’t good. Clark didn’t want to sit on this until tomorrow. “Can you please ask her to wait just a couple more minutes? I’m on my way there, I’ll be there shortly.”
Without waiting for a reply, he hung up the receiver and thanked Sherry. Then he headed outside in search of a secluded alleyway.
**********
To be continued...
